Information and the means to exchange information via computing technology have grown to be sophisticated and complex compared to the state of the art a mere 15 years ago. Today, computers have become critical to the efficient function and conduct of business in numerous sectors worldwide, ranging from governments to corporations and small businesses. The increasingly critical role of computing assets has, in turn, been the basis for concern from various sectors as to the reliability and manageability of computing assets.
System downtime events resulting from hardware problems result in considerable expense to businesses in the retail and securities industries, among others. Diagnosing and repairing a hardware-related problem within a system constitute a significant portion of the cost of system downtime. Furthermore, with networked applications taking on more essential business roles daily, the cost of system downtime will continue to grow.
Monitoring system components of a data processing system is known to aid in reducing downtime and, thus, costs associated with such downtime. Monitoring system components allows problems with components to be identified prior to a system component actually failing or to operation of the system component critically affecting performance of the data processing system. In conventional approaches for monitoring system components, it is known to present the user with a pictorial or simplified schematic view of the system for presenting status of temperature sensors, voltage sensors, fan speed sensors and the like. However, conventional approaches for monitoring system components have limitations associated with the manner in which information is presented.
One such limitation is that when presented with just the name of a failed or failing component (e.g., from a list of system components), it is often not obvious which specific system component is failed or failing upon opening the system's enclosure. Another such limitation is that it may still not be obvious which component is failed or failing in the case when a diagram (e.g., a schematic) is provided, but the diagram is not an accurate mapped representation of a respective portion of the actual data processing system. Still another such limitation is that inaccurate information is presented when a diagram used to depict a particular system is not automatically updated to recognize an added and/or removed system component.
Therefore, methods and equipment adapted for monitoring data processing system components in a manner that overcomes limitations associated with conventions approaches for monitoring data processing system components would be useful.